Gove's actions 'give hope' for justice policy

A debate on prison policy in the House of Lords last week "showed how much goodwill there is for the new justice secretary", according to the Conservative backbench peer who initiated the discussion.

Lord Fowler said policies being introduced by Michael Gove, who also holds the post of Lord Chancellor, "give more hope for advance in prison policy than anything I have heard for many years".

From the Labour front bench, Lord Beecham said: "It would be churlish not to welcome Mr Gove's appointment as Lord Chancellor, although almost anyone would have been an improvement on his predecessor".

Chris Grayling was Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor from September 2012 to May 2015, the first non-lawyer to hold the post for more than four centuries.

As such, he was never going to have an easy ride from the legal profession in his first cabinet post.

He was also required to save large sums of money from the Ministry of Justice budget, leading to cuts in legal aid and colourful protest meetings by lawyers.

Some lawyers also objected to his planned human rights changes, although in this he was merely seeking to do the prime minister's bidding and these were never implemented.

Improved relations

Despite praise for his prison policy, Mr Gove was criticised by a former law lord last week for continuing to detain 4,500 prisoners given indefinite terms of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) under a schemed abolished in 2012.

About 3,500 of these IPP prisoners have already served the minimum punishment periods set by the courts.

But the biggest difference between the two secretaries of state is the one that is the least obvious: Mr Gove has managed to establish much better relations than Mr Grayling ever had with what the Ministry of Justice regards as its stakeholder groups, notably the judiciary.

While well aware they can no longer rely on the lord chancellor being a lawyer, the judges are relieved to find the minister responsible for the legal system in England and Wales is now someone they can do business with.

Saturday, 23 January 2016

But his hands are tied because politicians cannot tell judges what sentences to pass in individual cases. What the justice secretary can do is to seek changes in the law if he thinks it is operating unfairly.

A law that has come in for a great deal of criticism is the former sentence of imprisonment for public protection, known as IPP.
Offenders were given a notional minimum term, known as the tariff, but they could be detained indefinitely after that term had expired.
The sentence was introduced under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 when Lord Blunkett was Labour's home secretary, and abolished at the end of 2012, when Kenneth Clarke was the Conservative minister responsible for sentencing policy.
But abolition was not retrospective. In June this year, more than 4,600 prisoners were still serving IPPs. By September, more than three-quarters had completed their minimum term and 392 IPP prisoners had served more than five times their tariff.
The government's policy is that IPP prisoners should continue to be detained until they can persuade the Parole Board, at a hearing, that the risks they pose to the public are safely manageable in the community.

'Terrible scourge'

But the Parole Board has a backlog of cases waiting to be heard - although that was reduced by 18% during the first 10 months of 2015 as a result of increased funding.

Even so, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Haywood, a former justice of the Supreme Court, described IPPs as a "form of preventive detention - internment - entirely alien to our traditional criminal justice approach".
He called on the justice secretary to "bring this terrible scourge to an end".Image caption Lord Brown has been highly critical of IPPs Although Michael Gove could do that, if he was persuaded to, he cannot issue sentencing guidelines for particular types of crime.
That's the job of the Sentencing Council, which was set up by Parliament to promote consistency in sentencing while maintaining the independence of the judiciary.
It recommends sentences according to the relative seriousness of different offences and the seriousness of the offender's behaviour relative to that of others convicted of the same offence.
Sometimes the council's guidelines are likely to result in shorter sentences (than they would have received before the guidelines were issued) and so the prison population will go down.
Some middle-ranking cases can be tried either by magistrates or by judge and jury.

From March 2016, magistrates will be encouraged not to send cases for trial in the Crown Court if they can be heard by the magistrates themselves.
Magistrates have more limited sentencing powers although, if necessary, they can send a convicted defendant to be sentenced in the Crown Court.Sentencers will also be reminded to give a full one-third discount to those who plead guilty at the earliest opportunity, even if the evidence against the defendant is overwhelming.

Sometimes Sentencing Council guidelines that attempt to get the courts to pass shorter sentences may backfire and produce the opposite result.
The council's chairman, Lord Justice Treacy, recently admitted that new guidelines for serious assaults had led to longer sentences, despite predictions that punishments would be less severe. The guidelines will now be revised.

Confusion

And sometimes offenders fail to grasp how long they will spend behind bars.
Anybody convicted of murder can expect to spend 15 years in prison, or 25 years if the accused was carrying a knife or other weapon.

It is not widely understood that offenders sentenced to life imprisonment must serve their tariffs in full before being considered for release on licence, unlike other offenders who are likely to be released after serving less than half their sentences.

I offer one solution to at least improve the situation.
The Parole Board carries out a thorough risk assessment before releasing a prisoner. During this time inmates serving IPP sentences may well be held in open prisons, to help them adjust to life in the outside.
But to get to an open jail, prisoners undergo a thorough risk assessment and, of course, they could walk out of their jails whenever they choose. By staying there, surely these men have proved they are not a risk.
Common sense and justice should prevail. This ugly stain on the criminal justice landscape can and should be removed forthwith.

Last year the number of IPPs reported as self-harming was equivalent to 42 percent of the total IPP population. Some go further. Recently VICE News found that since the sentences were abolished in 2012, at least 16 IPP prisoners have killed themselves while in jail. IPP prisoners are now more likely to die by suicide than prisoners with fixed release dates.

There were a total of 250 deaths in 201...4–15, 11 (5%) more than the year before. The increase was predominantly among adult male prisoners.

Six people a week recallIn some cases it was found IPP prisoners being recalled for minor infractions of their probation terms. One man received an IPP sentence after being charged with sexual assault for grabbing a woman's behind in the line at the post office. After he was released he was recalled to prison after returning one night to his hostel drunk. He stayed in jail for a further 17 months until he could finally see the Parole Board and was released again.

David Blunkett's Criminal Justice Act That allowed prisonersto be detained indefinitely requiring judges to pass life sentences on low-level offenders. The first was that offences did not have to be veryserious to trigger an IPP. "run-of-the-mill" crimes such as burglary, robbery or arson.

Offenders would serve the period they would be expecting for an offence two or three years on average, but sometimes much less – and then find themselves still in prison with little

prospect of release.

If anything, that makes things worse for prisoners stillserving IPPs. If they had been sentenced after December 2012, when theprovisions were repealed, they could look forward to serving their time and
being released. The same would apply if they had been convicted before April
2005, when section 225 of the 2003 Act came into effect.we need to put an end to this injustice and it is now time he opens up to humanity.

Friday, 15 January 2016

I would like to alert your readers to a significant legal case
to be heard on the 9th of February 2016, R (Stellato) v The Parole
Board. Currently the courts have been following the Lords decision in
(West) that if you are recalled illegally or adjustably you are still
legally held in prison. The House of Lords resigned from that the
position in (West) at Para 74 in R (Black) v Secretary of State for
Justice (2009). Lord Brown asserted that ‘It would not be lawful to
recall a prisoner unless he had breached his license conditions’.

My case should clearly establish that everyone recalled has been
assessed with the incorrect test as Article 5(4) gives you the right to
challenge your detention and the test has to be wide enough to cover the
breach. If you have not breached your license conditions then you are
entitled to compensation. If successful, it will mean that everyone who
has been recalled is a victim of violation of Article 5(4) if it can be
shown that the court which laid down the statutory test was made per
incurium. The logic and reason is with me, I conducted the research
myself, and although that is only one of my grounds it may significantly
alter the recall landscape.

I am further advancing vis-a-vis D cat, that a governor cannot change
your categorisation if you have been released as a D cat as everyone
who is recalled is presumed in law to be innocent or not to have
breached their license until the State has proven it was breached and if
you have to wait for an oral hearing or proceeding to Judicial Review
it would be subjudice. So, not only are you not precluded from D cat on
recall (PSI 40/2011: sec 5.3) but also the governor cannot claim that
you did breach your license.

After I win my case on the 9th of February you should seek a new
hearing before the Parole Board, or sue for damages for breach of
Article 5(4) because you couldn’t effectively challenge your detention
so claim damages for false imprisonment. The level of financial damages
for 6 months is roughly £35,000, but with a diminishing amount
thereafter – see Evans, para 7 {R (PB) – v – SSHD (2008).

Early Release Scheme

Justice Minister David Ford’s Early Release Scheme introduced
on June 1st 2015, seems to have been heralded as a success with the
recent release of 13 prisoners serving what constitutes as a ‘Lesser
Offence’. The scheme is indeed a milestone towards the reform of the
prison system in reducing overcrowding. Mr Ford, however, stated that
sex offenders, terrorists and life sentenced prisoners would be excluded
from the scheme. What a sweeping statement to make! Is it right that
the scheme should be limited to those serving a prison term of a ‘lesser
offence’ should only be considered?
Any offence that warrants a prison sentence is obviously going to be
of a serious nature to facilitate the incarceration of the guilty
person. Figures show that 58% of adult prisoners serving shorter
sentences for ‘lesser offences’ reoffend within one year of release. It
is not only those convicted of ‘lesser offences’ that can be assessed as
‘presenting a low risk of reoffending’ but also those convicted of
categories not contained within the realm of a ‘lesser offence’.

Mr Ford
unfairly tars, for example, all sex offenders with the same brush. My
level of risk reoffending is 1.1% over two years, reducing to 0.8% over
four years, yet even with a low risk of reoffending Mr Ford is excluding
people like myself from being included in this scheme
.
Justice Secretary Mr Gove, on 17th of July 2015, made a speech on
prison reform and confirmed the plans concerning early release for
prisoners. His comments were targeted at prisoners that were motivated
to working towards qualifications. He stated – ‘I am attracted to the
idea of earned release for those offenders who make a commitment to
serious educational activity, who show by their changed attitude that
they wish to contribute to society and who work hard to acquire proper
qualifications, which are externally validated and respected by
employers’.

Mr Gove does not appear to endorse Mr Ford’s determination to exclude
other offenders from the scheme, as it is likely to apply to most of
the 86,000 prisoners serving fixed-term sentences. The scheme should
encompass every prisoner within the system so that each can be judged on
their individual merit, risk of reoffending, behaviour and compliance,
instead of being brushed aside and labelled unworthy purely due to the
‘category’ of their conviction.

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A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a very unique and precious stone in a small river. The next day she met another traveller who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her pack to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the special stone in the wise woman's bag, appreciated it, and asked the wise woman to give it to him. The wise woman did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good luck. He knew the stone was worth enough to live peacefully for the rest of his life. But a few days later he came back, searching for the wise woman. When he found her, he returned the stone and said, I have been thinking. I know how valuable this stone is, but I give it back to you in the hope that you can give me something much more precious. If you can, give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.